Chapter 4 (p. 138-168): From Beak to Quill: Troubadour Lyric in Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d’amour.

Richard de Fournival’s Bestiaire d’amour, the third French narrative to incorporate Occitan (or formerly Occitan) material, might well have taken this latent “explanation” of Galli-cized Occitan as birdsong to its acme. Birds are, after all, more at home in a bestiary than in a lyric-interpolated romance, and they abound in Richard’s Bestiaire d’amour, a bestiary-cum-love narrative. Richard’s songbirds are not, however, associated with Occitan song. Instead, the troubadours are quoted in the Bestiaire’s account of the hoopoe, a bird not treated as a songbird by medieval bestiaries or treatises. - [Author]

Language: English

ISBN: 978-1-5017-4764-9; DOI: 10.1515/9781501747649